I just spent the week of December 28 - Jan 4 in Jamaica staying at Sandals Montego Bay.
First, the good. The resort is reasonably nice and typical of most of the all inclusives we've stayed at. The beach was good, the pools were OK, and the food was decent.
The best part is that the diving is all inclusive as well, with as many as two tanks a day included in what you pay to stay at the resort. The way they structure the trips, there is a one tank deeper dive (60-90') that leaves the resort at 9:00ish and a one tank shallow dive (35-40') that leaves at 11:30. They usually include the OW and resort course divers in the shallow dive, so it can get crowded, but the early dives I went on were all less than 8 certified divers.
The viz on the deeper dives was alright, probably in the 40-50' range, but I found the shallow dives were consistently worse, more in the 20-30' range. The sea life was fairly typical Caribbean without the big animals. There were a number of indigo hamlets, Sgt. Majors, four eye, black spot and striped butterflyfish, surgeonfish, etc. but I didn't see any parrotfish or angelfish at all. A couple of eagle rays though.
Strangely, of all the places I've dove, this is the first one to ask to see my log book. Even the liveaboards I've been on haven't asked to see it. I'm guessing this is because Sandals gets a lot of casual resort divers.
And now onto the bad. The resort is ten minutes away from the Montego Bay airport, and while you do get used to the sound of the departing planes at regular intervals throughout the day from 6:30 am until 10:30-11:00 at night, they're impossible to completely ignore - they're loud enough you have to pause your conversation for a few seconds until they pass by. The staff try to make a joke out of it, turning and waving at the planes as they go by, but it's an annoyance.
In terms of diving negatives, there is no nitrox available, and no matter what your certification level, total number of dives, or how recent your last dive, they force you to do one tank shallow dive your first day so they can gauge your capabilities for themselves. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that you can't get in two dives the first day.
What was frustrating however was the rigid dive time limits. After 35 minutes my wife and I still had over an hour of no-deco time left on our computers and more than a half tank of air, but the DM had said it was a 35 minute dive (he called every dive a 35 minute dive), and when we tried to float around under the boat for an extra few minutes after everyone else started their safety stop he banged on his tank constantly until we re-joined the group. We tried to talk to him and negotiate something afterward, but he wouldn't even consider it. It also goes without saying, the dives are all guided with no tolerance for exploring on your own.
We brought our own kit, but the rental gear was all reasonably new Scuba Pro stuff (rentals also included free of charge). I noticed a couple of tiny bubble leaks throughout the weak from rental gear, but it looked like it was well maintained.
Overall, if you're an experienced diver looking for a dive oriented holiday, I'd stay away from Sandals and there are a bunch of other places I'd recommend over Jamaica, but if you've got an affinity for Red Stripe, you're traveling with non-divers and looking for a reasonable all inclusive outside the usual diving suspects with good beaches and a couple of tanks of free decent diving sprinkled throughout the week while you're there (that was our situation), you can do far worse.
After all, when you're from Toronto, any January day diving the Caribbean is better than a snowy day at home. If anybody is considering Sandals Montego Bay and has any questions please feel free to PM me.
Cheers,
Drew
First, the good. The resort is reasonably nice and typical of most of the all inclusives we've stayed at. The beach was good, the pools were OK, and the food was decent.
The best part is that the diving is all inclusive as well, with as many as two tanks a day included in what you pay to stay at the resort. The way they structure the trips, there is a one tank deeper dive (60-90') that leaves the resort at 9:00ish and a one tank shallow dive (35-40') that leaves at 11:30. They usually include the OW and resort course divers in the shallow dive, so it can get crowded, but the early dives I went on were all less than 8 certified divers.
The viz on the deeper dives was alright, probably in the 40-50' range, but I found the shallow dives were consistently worse, more in the 20-30' range. The sea life was fairly typical Caribbean without the big animals. There were a number of indigo hamlets, Sgt. Majors, four eye, black spot and striped butterflyfish, surgeonfish, etc. but I didn't see any parrotfish or angelfish at all. A couple of eagle rays though.
Strangely, of all the places I've dove, this is the first one to ask to see my log book. Even the liveaboards I've been on haven't asked to see it. I'm guessing this is because Sandals gets a lot of casual resort divers.
And now onto the bad. The resort is ten minutes away from the Montego Bay airport, and while you do get used to the sound of the departing planes at regular intervals throughout the day from 6:30 am until 10:30-11:00 at night, they're impossible to completely ignore - they're loud enough you have to pause your conversation for a few seconds until they pass by. The staff try to make a joke out of it, turning and waving at the planes as they go by, but it's an annoyance.
In terms of diving negatives, there is no nitrox available, and no matter what your certification level, total number of dives, or how recent your last dive, they force you to do one tank shallow dive your first day so they can gauge your capabilities for themselves. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that you can't get in two dives the first day.
What was frustrating however was the rigid dive time limits. After 35 minutes my wife and I still had over an hour of no-deco time left on our computers and more than a half tank of air, but the DM had said it was a 35 minute dive (he called every dive a 35 minute dive), and when we tried to float around under the boat for an extra few minutes after everyone else started their safety stop he banged on his tank constantly until we re-joined the group. We tried to talk to him and negotiate something afterward, but he wouldn't even consider it. It also goes without saying, the dives are all guided with no tolerance for exploring on your own.
We brought our own kit, but the rental gear was all reasonably new Scuba Pro stuff (rentals also included free of charge). I noticed a couple of tiny bubble leaks throughout the weak from rental gear, but it looked like it was well maintained.
Overall, if you're an experienced diver looking for a dive oriented holiday, I'd stay away from Sandals and there are a bunch of other places I'd recommend over Jamaica, but if you've got an affinity for Red Stripe, you're traveling with non-divers and looking for a reasonable all inclusive outside the usual diving suspects with good beaches and a couple of tanks of free decent diving sprinkled throughout the week while you're there (that was our situation), you can do far worse.
After all, when you're from Toronto, any January day diving the Caribbean is better than a snowy day at home. If anybody is considering Sandals Montego Bay and has any questions please feel free to PM me.
Cheers,
Drew
